Marching Bands get noticed

If you haven't seen this one by now, you'd better catch up. Saturday's halftime show by the Ohio State marching band is making waves around the world.

The most popular copy of Ohio State's video game tribute halftime show has drawn more than 7.2 million views on YouTube, and the band says it has received messages of admiration from around the world as a result. But in an article in the Cleveland newspaper, the director of the band says it wasn't much more work than any other show.

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“It was a unique coming together of a lot of things at the right time and right place,”OSU band director Jon Waters told The Plain Dealer on Tuesday morning. “As a band director, when you go into a halftime show when the team is leading, it makes the show better, it really does, because the fans are happy. So we were winning, it was a night game, the band looks great under the lights, it was a national TV game and a very highly touted game, and I think people’s emotions were just perfect to react the way they did to our show.”

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He said about 14 hours of rehearsal and additional hours spent memorizing music over seven days went into the production, which is the same formula for most of their shows.

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“You’ve got a stadium full of college students who have grown up on video games,” Waters said. “And even for the people who are there as typical football fans, they have played these video games, so people who wouldn’t ordinarily pay attention to the band suddenly hear something they recognize on the field and they look and say, ‘Hey, I recognize that formation.’

“And one of the cool things that made it go viral is that video gamers online have picked up on it. It’s just really great. I thought we’d get a great audience response, but what I didn’t expect was the national and international recognition.”

And in a shameless plug, I was part of Texas Tech's Goin' Band From Raiderland, which performed a complicated rotating flower pattern that's well known in college marching circles during a 2002 show at Ohio State. Football buffs may remember that game as the debut of Maurice Clarett, the year Ohio State won the national championship.